Description

In the crowded genre of tower defense, Cereus has been hailed as refreshing, unique, clean, simple to control, and easy to learn. Best described as a cross between Tower Defense, Geometry Wars, and Asteroids, Cereus feels like a retro game with modern touches.

You defend your base with three basic abilities:
1. Tap to hit enemies
2. Swipe to draw a barrier that blocks bullets and reflects damage back to the shooter
3. Long press to drop bombs that damage several enemies at once

Collect cells from defeated shapes to gain skill points, which are then used to upgrade your abilities. Work your way through increasingly difficult challenges and bosses.

Despite the simple rules that govern the game mechanics, Cereus features a second, more strategic layer. The skill grid is not designed to directly increase your damage but to make you more versatile. Knowing the finer details of your abilities will help ensure you make the right snap decisions in stressful situations. For example, the damage a tap deals to an enemy depends on how long you've let it charge. The higher the charge, the more damage you do. This means you need to decide how long to charge before tapping an enemy who may be about to slam into your base. The barrier reflects damage of the bullets it destroys back to the shooter, but can reflect up to 600% more damage the farther the barrier is drawn from the base. The bomb not only deals damage to a large area, but it can also slow enemies down and make them take more damage. Defeating several enemies in a row will trigger a combo that increases damage and cells gained. Maintaining a combo is essential to increasing your odds of beating a level. You can improve your ease of maintaining a combo with specific abilities in the skill tree.

The more you explore the skill grid, the more options you will have to save you in tricky situations.

History

Cereus is the first official game by Casey Weeks (moniker 'Boz'), working under the company name "Aesth". Boz worked on this game in his spare time after freelance Interaction Design work over the course of 3 years.

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Selected Articles

"There's been plenty of games where you're defending the center of the screen, but typically they're more on the arcade shooter side of the spectrum. I like that Cereus is going for a more strategic approach, and I especially like how the abilities are designed for the touchscreen. "- Jared Nelson, TouchArcade